On Monday 10 July 1944, the Birmingham Daily Gazette writes, 'After the lapse 1 of three or four years since the last heavy blitzes there is no bombed site that 1 nature has not tried to beautify; and the more rubble strewn about, the more ; garden-like the effect' (figure 1). Poignant and reflective, in the years following the Blitz (1940—41), accounts that link a sudden greening of the shattered English landscape with a scarred but resilient public mindset appear with increasing frequency in the published press. A fundamental question permeates a significant number of reports published in London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Hull and other effected cities: how come that from the boundless masses of rubble and destruction, so quickly 'plants appear to soften the desolation' Possible explanations and implications are voiced by journalists, members of the public, politicians, artists, writers, poets and scientists. In 1945, English naturalist and social scientist Richard S. R. Fitter observes that in central and suburban London, even 'where human activity has created wholly artificial habitats, a flora and fauna have adapted themselves to conditions sometimes totally unlike anything normally found in nature'. Among the plants he records to first colonize the vast and barren post-Blitz landscape are a handful of common weeds, reeds and wildfiowers, but only one 'garden plant'Bud-dleia davidii (figure 2).
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